e: not my own
am I, but the World's; and Time flies fast, and Heaven is high, and
Hell is deep: Man! bethink thee, if thou hast power of Thought! Why
not; what binds me here? Want, want!--Ha, of what? Will all the
shoe-wages under the Moon ferry me across into that far Land of Light?
Only Meditation can, and devout Prayer to God. I will to the woods:
the hollow of a tree will lodge me, wild-berries feed me; and for
Clothes, cannot I stitch myself one perennial suit of Leather!"

'Historical Oil-painting,' continues Teufelsdroeckh, 'is one of the
Arts I never practised; therefore shall I not decide whether this
subject were easy of execution on the canvas. Yet often has it seemed
to me as if such first outflashing of man's Freewill, to lighten, more
and more into Day, the Chaotic Night that threatened to engulf him in
its hindrances and its horrors, were properly the only grandeur there
is in History. Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and
understanding heart, picture George Fox on that morning, when he
spreads-out his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts cowhides by
unwonted patterns, and stitches them together into one continuous
all-including Case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou
noble Fox: every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the
heart of Slavery, and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows
jerk, and in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee
across the Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and
Ragfair, into lands of true Liberty; were the work done, there is in
broad Europe one Free Man, and thou art he!

'Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height;
and for the Poor also a Gospel has been published. Surely if, as
D'Alembert asserts, my illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the
greatest man of Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by
stronger reason is George Fox the greatest of the Moderns; and greater
than Diogenes himself: for he too stands on the adamantine basis of
his Manhood, casting aside all props and shoars; yet not, in
half-savage Pride, undervaluing the Earth; valuing it rather, as a
place to yield him warmth and food, he looks Heavenward from his
Earth, and dwells in an element of Mercy and Worship, with a still
Strength, such as the Cynic's Tub did nowise witness. Great, truly,
was that Tub; a temple from which man's dignity and divinity was
scornfully preached abroad: but greater